


The Many Ages of Man

by tritonreverse



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 18:18:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9001387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tritonreverse/pseuds/tritonreverse
Summary: "...and so he tells them to himself, waving his hands through the air, imagining flight."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I'm aware that this is more or less Jossed, but back when I wrote it, alit with possibility from this movie, I wanted it to be true.

He’s five, and his favorite stories are about how General Organa and General Solo and Luke Skywalker began saving the Galaxy, blowing up the second Death Star. His mum does amazing X-Wing noises, and always ends the story with the tale of a party on a far-away moon. Sometimes she’s not there to tell those stories, though, so he tells them to himself, waving his hands through the air, imagining flight. 

 

He’s ten, and Ben Solo is his best friend! Well, his best friend when he’s around, which is rare, because Ben spends a lot of time on a different moon with his Uncle Luke, the same one Poe heard so many stories about. Ten is a big age, though, and Poe’s too busy learning about how ships work (it’s not magic, you know) to really worry. 

 

He’s fifteen, and he knows something’s up with Ben, but he can’t put his finger on it. They’re both busy - Poe finishing up his preliminary pilot’s license, Ben with whatever training he’s off doing, but even still, Poe can sense a change in his childhood friend. Distractedly (stupidly, he’ll curse himself later) he writes it off to some passing thing, resentment towards being shipped off, away from where the action is (the Empire didn’t all die with the Death Star.) 

 

He’s twenty, and he’s never seen the General so despondent, and Solo has disappeared, along with Skywalker, and his best friend is gone - dead, some say - behind all the deaths of those training with Skywalker, others mutter - and he hears the truth of it (or what they know) from the General one night, the night she commissions him into Black Squadron, gives him a ship and a droid and a letter. The droid is the best gift, it turns out, a small round BB unit not originally intended for astromech duties, but modified, and with a personality of its own. The letter explains things, and he burns it in the back-fire of his engines once he’s memorized it. 

 

He’s twenty-two, and the leader of his squad, and the First Order is making attacks with these new stormtroopers - not clones like the stories, but people, people like him. He loses his first pilot, a young human woman named Kalita, and quickly his second, when they’re jumped by a ship larger than they thought the First Order had. He makes it back to base, and then steadily gets drunk with a dedication he previously only thought he could apply to flying. 

 

He’s thirty-two, and while part of him wants to tell Ben to grow up and take off the mask and remember who he is (the part that smarts off about talking first), the quieter, more cautious part, the part that’s kept him alive in too many space battles to count, tells him not to. It hurts more than the torture, though, to know that behind that alien visage his former friend is there. His friend is the one making him relive his worst memories. His friend is the one rummaging carelessly around in his head - and when he cracks, and Ren, Kylo Ren - not Ben - pulls the image of his beloved BB-8 out of his head, he deliriously wonders if Ren remembers that they once were going to fly together. 

 

He’s thirty-two and feels a lot older and this kid with fear and stars in his eyes is saying “it’s the right thing to do” and he remembers - and laughs. 

 

“You need a pilot.”


End file.
